The Philosophy Of Star Trek: Is The Prime Directive Ethical?

Within the Star Trek universe, the
Prime Directive is a crucial regulation that is binding on Starfleet personnel. How well does it work as an ethical rule?

The Prime Directive (officially Starfleet Order 1) is a prohibition on interference with the other cultures and civilizations representatives of Starfleet encounter in their exploration of the universe. In particular, the Prime Directive is aimed at preventing interference with the internal development of civilizations that are less technologically advanced. The executive summary of the order given in the 1968 episode “Bread and Circuses” is:

no identification of self or mission; no interference with the social development of said planet; no references to space, other worlds, or advanced civilizations.

Even though Starfleet officers take an oath to uphold the Prime Directive even if it means sacrificing their own lives or the lives of their crews, as practiced, across several episodes of the various Star Trek series, it was not inviolable. Captain James T. Kirk seemed to violate it with some regularity, and sticklers for Starfleet regulations could go into detail about circumstances in which strict adherence to the Prime Directive is not required.

That said, how does the Prime Directive fare as a general approach to the ethics of sharing a universe?

The Prime Directive reflects both a consequentialist commitment to reducing harm and a Kantian commitment to respecting the autonomy of others. Built into the Prime Directive is an assumption that cultures are better off if left to their own devices (whether those “devices” are social practices or concrete technologies). Interference by Starfleet, even if well-intentioned, is judged likely to mess things up in unanticipated ways — and if the culture in question is to deal with unintended harms, it would be better if they result from the culture’s own free choices. This embodies a kind of anti-colonialist ethos, a commitment to respecting a civilization's own values, beliefs, and practices rather than imposing “better” ones upon them. (Recall that the original run of Star Trek coincided with the Vietnam War, American involvement in which made a policy of non-interference look pretty good to many viewers.)

As well, a policy of non-interference reflects a particular attitude to the project of studying other cultures, namely that what you’re trying to understand is how the culture and its members would behave if the observers weren’t there. Intervening is presumed to contaminate “natural” behaviors and the authentic causal chains (including eventual development of indigenous technologies) that flow from them.

Note that even observing the culture or civilization you are trying to learn about can interfere with it, depending on how you observe it. This is not quite the same as the “measurement problem” for quantum mechanical systems, where our measurements of such systems involves hitting them with electrons or photons or other stuff very similar in properties to the system we’re trying to measure (and where that measurement is not simply revealing the pre-existing state of the system but collapsing the wave-function to make the state you’re measuring). Rather, it’s more like the problem primatologists encounter in field studies, of whether their presence, if noticed by the primates they are observing, somehow deforms the natural behavior of these primates.

If your concern is not to change the natural behavior or development of alien citizens at any cost, your best bet is to stay at home rather than to explore new worlds.

Kirk and Spock in 'Return of the Archons' - the first episode referencing the Prime Directive. (Paramount Pictures/ Courtesy: Everett Collection)

But if the Prime Directive seems to line up with some strong moral intuitions — that we should respect the autonomy of other cultures and strive not to inflict even unintentional harms on them — it also bumps up against the fact that Star Trek is all about the ethical project of sharing a universe.

Sharing a universe with another culture is a different kind of project than treating that culture only as an object of study. Sharing a universe with other beings puts you in a different relationship with them than you would be with photons or prosimians you want to understand.

There may be circumstances in which choosing not to intervene results in more harm to a civilization (for instance, if Starfleet could share a vaccine or another technological tool that could prevent the civilization’s extinction). And there’s a way in which respecting a civilization’s autonomy by withholding information about self, mission, and other worlds could be downright paternalistic. Sharing a universe with other beings involves a kind of reciprocity — even if your technological attainment is quite different, it means recognizing you are owed the same moral consideration.

Maybe this is why the Prime Directive is not an exceptionless rule: Even if Starfleet ought not to play God, nor to use its superior technologies to impose its will by force, ultimately ethics may require that we trust members of other civilizations to choose their own paths even as they grapple with the possibilities presented by contact with Starfleet. Really sharing a universe is itself a kind of intervention. The trick is finding a way to share it on something like equal terms.

I’m a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at San José State University, where my teaching and research are focused on the intersections of scientific knowledge-building and ethics. I have a BA in Chemistry and Philosophy from Wellesley College, a PhD in Chemistry from ...